Discussion is an important part of the learning experience in many classrooms. A great way to promote discussion in a classroom is to arrange seats in a circle or half circle, with the teacher at the open end. Because all students are able to see one another and no one is staring at the back of someone's head, this arrangement is conducive to encouraging students to engage with one another. Additionally, because no one is in the back or front of the classroom, all students have an equal spacial opportunity to be seen and heard.
Arranging students into clusters is a common way to encourage group work. This works particularly well for hands on classes such as science labs or other courses that involve a great deal of teamwork. The students are arranged facing one another in groups of roughly four to six. Because they are sitting next to the same people they work with, they become more familiar and comfortable with their group mates.
In many classrooms, there are a handful of students who are more or less well behaved on their own but can be a handful when in the company of their friends. Joking, talking and giggling in the back of a classroom can be very disruptive to other students and the instructor. By moving noisy or misbehaving students apart, a teacher can help to lessen the extent of such distractions.
School is one of the principal environments in which a child learns to socialize with other people her age. Many teachers like to promote socialization by having children interact with as many of their classmates as possible. One way to do this is to have a rotating seating chart. For example, a teacher might have a seating arrangement that changes several times throughout the course of the academic year so students sit next to several classmates during the course of the term, giving them an opportunity to meat new people and make new friends.